Sports

March 29, 2016

With calls of “play ball” starting the 2016 baseball season this coming Sunday, it seemed right to focus our blog post this week on a Masonic baseball jersey that we recently added to the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library collection. The short-sleeved shirt is off-white with dark pinstripes and bears the team name across the chest, “Ionic.” What made this an exciting find for us is the blue patch on one sleeve with a square and compasses symbol and a G in the center. This jersey seems to have been worn by a member of a team in a Masonic baseball league during the late 1910s or early 1920s.

“A Masonic baseball league?” you might ask, “how many of those could there have been?” Turns out, there were several, so we don’t know where this shirt was originally worn. Initially, we thought that the jersey might have been used by the Ionic team that played in Detroit during the 1910s and 1920s. Newspaper accounts from 1917 through 1921 trace the league’s games and frequently reference the Ionic team, who were the 1918 champions. But we haven’t been able to conclusively link this shirt to the Detroit league yet. There was also a league active in western New York during the 1930s, although we do not have a complete list of team names. And, Duluth, Minnesota, Freemasons organized an “indoor baseball league” in 1914, which was active into the 1920s. Newspaper articles confirm that this league had an Ionic Lodge team, but a March 1922 article about their playoff contest refers to them as “the Red and Gray squad,” suggesting their team colors do not match this jersey.

Other items in our collection also tell us that “Masonic” baseball games took place in New Jersey. This ticket (at right), from our Archives, admitted the bearer to a game on June 24, 1911, between Irvington’s Franklin Lodge No. 10 and Newark’s Oriental Lodge No. 51. And, a photo in our collection (below) from October 1935 documents an “All-Star Masonic Game” that was played in Trenton between National League and American League players. The teams were made up of professional baseball players who were also Freemasons. It seems to have been a fundraising event put on by Trenton’s Tall Cedars of Lebanon Forest No. 4.

Our Ionic shirt has a label stitched inside telling us that it was made by Thomas E. Wilson and Company in Chicago. However, a few years before this shirt was made, in 1909 and 1910, consecutive Grand Masters of Illinois ruled that a group of baseball clubs with all-Masonic players “cannot use the name “Masonic Baseball League” or any other name in which Mason or Masonic appears” in the jurisdiction. While creating the league and playing the games was not banned, it was felt that “it would not do for lodges to vote funds for the entertainment and amusement of a few members, who desire to engage in something foreign to Masonry.”

Histories of Thomas E. Wilson and Company (known today as Wilson Sporting Goods Company) help us to date this jersey between 1916 and 1925, when it was using the particular label in this shirt, and the Thomas E. Wilson and Company name. Thomas E. Wilson (1868-1958), who was born in Canada and came to Chicago in 1877, joined that city’s Mizpah Lodge No. 768 in 1894. Do you have any documents or objects associated with a Masonic baseball league? Do you know where this jersey might have been used? Leave us a comment below!

July 21, 2015

I was recently looking at a volume of Menotomy Royal Arch Chapter's Book of Marks, which is in our Library & Archives collection. The book contains the "marks" of 175 members of Menotomy Royal Arch Chapter, between January 21, 1867 and October 6, 1897. I was particularly intrigued by Harry Wellington Davis's mark, pictured here, which suggests that when Davis joined the Chapter in 1887, he had a strong interest or connection to baseball.

The Mark Master degree is conferred in Royal Arch Chapters. As part of the degree, each candidate selects a unique, personal “mark,” an allusion to the marks that working stonemasons left on medieval stone work. Marks selected for the Mark Master degree often represent or incorporate a Mason’s name or occupation, or feature Masonic symbols. Sometimes they reveal an interest, hobby, or other avocational passion.

Curious about Davis's baseball emblem "mark," I dug a little deeper to see what I could find.

Harry Wellington Davis (1863-1943) was a salesman who was born and lived in Lexington, Massachusetts. In 1886 he petitioned Simon W. Robinson Lodge, the local Masonic lodge, and was raised a Master Mason on February 7, 1887. In 1887, Lexington did not have its own Royal Arch Chapter, so Lexington Masons would have to have joined Menotomy Royal Arch Chapter in Arlington, the next town over. Menotomy Chapter was named after the old name for the town it was founded in - Menotomy, later known as West Cambridge, renamed itself Arlington in 1867, as a memorial to the Civil War dead buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Davis was one of only six members who joined the Chapter in 1887.

But what about those baseball emblems? A quick internet search turned up an 1887 photograph of the Lexington Baseball Team. The photograph - which is part of the Worthen Collection at Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, Massachusetts - reveals that Harry W. Davis was, in fact, a member of the team in 1887. He is pictured in the middle row, far right, in the 1887 photo.

Menotomy Royal Arch Chapter was chartered on June 12, 1866. In 1993, Menotomy Royal Arch Chapter effectively came to an end when it merged with Belmont Royal Arch Chapter and the chapter in Belmont became the surviving chapter.

When Davis died in 1943, he had been a Mason for fifty-six years. He was posthumously awarded the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts' Veterans Medal.

Caption:

Mark of Harry Wellington Davis, from Book of Marks for Menotomy Royal Arch Chapter, 1867-1897. Gift of Mystic-Woburn Royal Arch Chapter, Woburn, Massachusetts.

July 02, 2008

Looking for an engaging yet quick read this summer? How about something that combines sports and Freemasonry?

Sportswriter Jim Dent covered the Dallas Cowboys for 11 years. While in Texas he never heard of the Masonic Home, in fact he first learned about them half-listening to a story about an old football player on ESPN. Something about it got his attention though and the next day he headed for Fort Worth and began researching the recently closed Masonic Home, Hardy Brown, coach Rusty Russell and and an entire team of underdogs that played in some of the biggest games in Texas high school history.

Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Might Mites Who Ruled Texas Football tells the story. Dent details how this small band of orphans in the middle of the Depression, a bunch of underweight, under-equipped kids went on to beat larger, better funded, and much better-equipped schools during the 1930's and 1940's. It's a great, true story.

Additional background information about the Masonic Home and School of Texas may be found in our copy of Robert L. Dillard's 1973 history of the orphanage (image at left is from the cover). Dillard, a former President of the Board of Directors there, provides a detailed history of the institution that opened its doors in 1900. While there is only brief mention of sports of any kind and a short note in the chronology for 1942 that "H.N. "Rusty" Russell, long-time Principal and coach, left the Home", it provides some background for Dent's more focused story.

Dillard, Robert L. History of Masonic Home & School of Texas. Fort Worth: Masonic Home and School, 1973.Call number: 42 .D578 1973

And, as suggested by the comment below, see also an interesting look at the Masonic Home and the integral part athletics played in it, in

Vaughn, William Preston, "Masonic Home and School of Texas, 1920-1940: The Glory Days" in A Daily Advancement in Masonic Knowledge: The Collected Blue Friar Lectures. Bloomington, IL: The Masonic Book Club, 2003. Call number: 61 .D133 2003